Amherst hotel becomes a Doubletree

The Hotel Indigo has changed its brand affiliation to the Doubletree moniker.

The switch brings the 187-room, 25-year-old Amherst hotel, the region’s 13th-largest hotel, back into the Hilton corporate family.

“It is basically coming full circle,” said David Hart, Hart Hotels Inc. president, who owns the property.

With the switch, the Buffalo area now has two Doubletree properties. A Doubletree hotel is located in the heart of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.

Originally constructed as a Hampton Inn, which is also part of the Hilton corporate family of hotels, Hart made the switch to the emerging Hotel Indigo brand five years ago because of several factors including the possibility of Benderson Development Co. bringing a Hampton or another Hilton property to its proposed Amherst Town Center development on Maple Road — less than two miles away from the now-former Indigo.

The Amherst Town Center project was scrapped and Benderson recently sold the property to American Campus Communities, a developer of student housing, for $10.5 million.

To make the Hotel Indigo conversion, Hart Hotels added 5,000-square-feet to the property that brought meeting space, a restaurant and bar. Those additions made it very attractive to Hilton to convert the property into a Doubletree.

“It was basically a different hotel, with different assets, than it was five years ago,” Hart said.

Hart thinks the Doubletree brand will work better for the Flint Road property - located just across Maple Road from the University at Buffalo campus.

“Indigo is very viable brand and I think it works well, but, perhaps better in a more urban setting,” Hart said. “Doubletree fits better into Amherst.”

Hart Hotels operates 13 hotels including five in the Buffalo Niagara area.